It was a historic weekend for the fighting game community at Evo 2024 with several records broken for individual tournament participants and becoming the largest open-bracket esports event of all time, though there was more than just the competition.
With another Evo officially in the books, we’re here to recap all the announcements you might have missed over the past three days in the genre.
Aside from the ridiculous spectacle PGW|Hayao put on for Street Fighter 3: Third Strike, there were plenty more new things presented to fans and a few unexpected surprises.
We’ve of course had news about Street Fighter 6, Tekken 8, Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves, Guilty Gear Strive and many more that we’re about to cover.
We unfortunately didn’t get anything for the Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection like a release date, but the developers of Street Fighter 6 have revealed that they definitely want to make a new crossover fighting game.
Let’s jump right in and go through them all in somewhat chronological order.
After kicking things off early on Friday, Bushiroad Games has finally revealed Meruem for Hunter x Hunter: Nen Impact in a new trailer, but that’s not all.
They also revealed the rest of the starting roster in the game’s opening cinematic, including Kite, Genthru, Morel, and Razor to bring the total to 16 characters.
We are still waiting for the release date.
Also on Friday, Cygames officially revealed Versusia as the next DLC character for Granblue Versus and made her playable on the Evo floor for attendees.
That wasn’t all of course as they also released the trailer and release date for Versusia, as well as revealed Vikala as the final member of the Season 1 additions.
Finally, Sandalphon was teased alongside confirmation of a second season of content likely starting in 2025.
SNK seemed to be the developer with the most to show this past weekend, and that of course includes Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves.
Kevin Rian is the latest character to be revealed for the Garou sequel, and he’s looking to hit you very, very hard – although hopefully not as as hard as he did in the original game.
In addition to this, SNK also revealed that the new Fatal Fury will be releasing on PlayStation 4 as well as the previously announced PlayStation 5, Xbox, and PC.
We knew from the start that the 15 new special DLC characters for King of Fighters would be revealed, and they turned out to be two crowd-pleasing classics.
Vice and Mature are expected to return in December and will likely be the last fighters added to the game.
They haven’t really shown much beyond their new designs, so we’ll have to wait a bit longer to see their gameplay trailers and get more details.
SNK also had probably the biggest surprise of the entire event by dropping the re-release of SNK vs. Capcom: SVC Chaos, originally released in 2003.
The companies’ latest official crossover fighter now features rollback netcode, lobbies, a new gallery, and more features.
SVC Chaos was released immediately on Steam, but is now also available on PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and PC.
MultiVersus made a surprise announcement that they would have something special to show at Evo shortly before the event, but unfortunately it wasn’t Scorpion.
Instead, we got to see the reveal of Samurai Jack and Beetlejuice coming in MVS Season 2.
And Jack will be coming very soon with the new update.
Although it unfortunately leaked a little early, Arc System Works has revealed its full lineup of DLC for Guilty Gear Strive Season 4 with some interesting surprises.
Fan favorites like Dizzy and Venom are finally set to return alongside newcomer Unika from the upcoming Guilty Gear anime, but the most interesting choice of all was Lucy from Cyberpunk: Edgerunners.
They’ll also be releasing a special open beta for Strive’s new 3v3 mode later this week.
So it turns out that Katsuhiro Harada lied to us all when he told us that Heihachi Mishima was completely dead after the events of the last game.
Although he did not participate in the main story of Tekken 8, Heihachi is alive and returning as the third DLC character after Lidia later this year.
It looks like he’ll also feature heavily in the upcoming Story Mode expansion.
Capcom didn’t have as much to show at Evo this year compared to 2023, but that doesn’t mean they came empty-handed.
They released the official trailer for Terry Bogard in Street Fighter 6, which gave us a look at the savage wolf in the RE engine with his classic Fatal Fury look.
This gives fans a glimpse at the introduction of Terry’s World Tour mode, but we’ll have to wait a little longer for actual gameplay and details.
Although Uzuki was originally slated for an August release, French Bread has revealed that Under Night In-Birth II’s first DLC character will be arriving this week.
Uzuki will be released on July 25th next week! pic.twitter.com/CuFod2zyu7
— FGC Anime News (@AFGCNews) July 20, 2024
Diesel Legacy: The Brazen Age revealed Damkina as a new playable character and showcased her at their Evo booth.
Damkina enters the scene! 🍸
Damkina’s glamorous diva moves will crush, slap and trample anyone who dares to oppose her.
But be careful! She holds a dark and evil secret.
Damkina will be playable at #DieselHeritage stand at #EVO2024 in Las Vegas from July 19 to 21! pic.twitter.com/zHL98jsGR9
— Diesel Legacy: The Golden Age (@DieselLegacy) July 18, 2024
Rivals of Aether 2 has announced Orcane as a new fighter, and the developers have revealed that all future characters in the game will be free.
Missed our announcements at Evo this weekend? Read the summary of all the updates here: https://t.co/6TkwODYpVM
— Rivals of Aether // Rivals 2 (@RivalsOfAether) July 22, 2024
Given how crazy this weekend was, there’s a good chance that Evo had more to reveal than we ended up missing, so if there’s anything we missed, let us know in the comments.
And tell us what was your favorite part of Evo this year too.